The Rest of the Story

The Rest of the Story

This in reply to Mr. James O. Hartman’s letter to the editor in the May 21st issue of the RC. Mr. Hartman, I will address you in the first person in this reply. Facts are stubborn things.

Let me be clear that I draw a parallel to your reporting in the RC opinion page with what in the 30’s was called yellow journalism. Use of the journalism in the same sentence with your name does a disservice to journalists everywhere even those in the mainstream.

In your article:
First paragraph, you said, “Wheeler’s refusal to debate Reedy should come as no surprise.” Well, gosh Mr. Hartman you must have been out of town for all the candidate forums in the last month. So your statement in not only inaccurate, it is a lie.

The second paragraph addresses the “slavery” video. I could go on for several paragraphs on how that came about, but you, like Governor Sandoval, Senator Heller, Michele Fiore, and all the nattering bloggers, took the easy route to the moral high ground and didn’t bother to ask the members of the Storey County audience, who hardly took note of the comment, nor Jim Wheeler himself, what the rest of the story was. Shame on you and those public officials named above.

You go to great lengths to describe the alleged ethics violations. If you recall those violations were filed by one Kelly Kite, the same Kelly Kite who lost to Jim in the last election cycle; and the same Kelly Kite who first said he would run and then not and then run again, all prior to the filing deadline. Oh and let’s not forget that Secretary of State Ross Miller investigated all those allegations and found no basis for any fines or reprimand. Mind you this is the DEMOCRAT secretary of state. So your statements are not only misleading, but they are flat out lies.

Mr. Hartman, you must be the most naïve person on the face of the earth if you believe that a freshman assemblyman in any state in the union would be given the latitude to write bills that would be given any consideration. That’s why the first termers are called freshmen. You also should know that Jim fielded 12 BDR’s, that’s Bill Draft Requests for the uninitiated, and none of them got out of committee. Why is that? In case you didn’t know, the Legislature is controlled by the DEMOCRATS, the same folks who gave you $620 million in taxes that were supposed to go away two years ago and who favor the margins tax that will be the death knell for Nevada small business.

And finally, I agree that there have been many upstanding citizen-legislators who are from Assembly District 39, among them the ones you mentioned, but you seem to have painted all those, whom you favored, who sat in that seat as folks with shining halos over their heads; people who don’t suffer from the same human frailty as the rest of us who make mistakes. So in this case you didn’t lie, you deliberately distorted the truth.

Oh, I forgot something. I just received a mailer from the Nevada Republican Majority PAC. Now I’m guessing that most people who received that mailer will take it at face value, but I would like to point something out. It is a striking to me that the subject matter was the same as the content of your letter to the editor. Being an inquisitive type, I went to the Secretary of State website to find out who submits the CE report for this PAC. Lo and behold whose name is at the bottom of the form? Yours. That mailer was nothing less than yellow journalism; in the parlance of politics it is called mud-slinging; a hit piece that only twists the truth. I rarely apply the word despicable, but in the case of this mailer it seems appropriate.

I also checked to see who backed your PAC. It was the Nevada Motor Transport Association to the tune of $3000 and whose website says, “NMTA has a strong voice in the Nevada Legislature.” Oh, in case you weren’t aware, NMTA donated $2000 to Wheeler’s opponent. Interesting.

It makes me a little leery to think that an entity outside the legislature has that much power inside the legislature. And could it be that if we had more legislators like Jim Wheeler the legislature would be looking after the interests of their constituents and the state, and not those of the lobbyists?

Re-elect Jim Wheeler to Nevada Assembly District 39.